Boccardi, who was a freshman with his cousins on Vianney’s most recent state championship team in 2020 and whose father was the goalie for the school’s first Challenge Cup championship team in 1996, scored with 20 seconds left to help the Golden Griffins salvage a valuable 1-1 tie in the Mid-States Club Hockey Association Challenge Cup playoffs at the Maryville University Hockey Center on Friday night.

“That's one of the best highs you could ever ask for,” Boccardi said. “We needed that point. It was just 20 seconds left, trying to get a rebound, honestly, it was stuck under the pad. It was really fun, really nice.”

Boccardi, who had one goal in the regular season, won the faceoff deep in the Marquette zone after Vianney had called a timeout to set up its last stand. The Golden Griffins were on the power play and had pulled the goalie to create a 6-on-4 advantage.

“Get the puck to the net, put the bigs in front, (Cooper) Palazzolo and (Logan) Fiala which they were there,” Vianney coach Kevin McGlynn said. “I'm sure their goalie and their defenseman had trouble locating the puck with those two big guys in front. And that's what we tried to do, and Vinny gathered it up.”

Isaac Mejia-Troop made 24 saves for Vianney (7-11-4), the No. 7 seed in the Red Conference.

Cade Eckert scored and John Mohrmann made 13 saves for Marquette (11-9-2), the No. 6 seed.

“I felt like we were the better team and we just didn't get the result,” Eckert said. “But it's all about our process and doing the right things.”

The top four teams out of the six in the red conference will move on to face the top four teams from the blue conference in the Challenge Cup quarterfinals.

Friday’s game was the round robin opener for each team. Vianney faces the No. 3 seed De Smet and Marquette plays No. 2 seed Kirkwood on Saturday night.

“In this format a tie is huge,” McGlynn said. “It was a well-played game by two teams that are very similar.”

Up until Boccardi’s goal, it looked like Marquette would take both points with the outright win after Eckert scored his team-high 14th goal to break a scoreless tie with just 5 minutes, 47 seconds left in the third period.

“You just can't lose,” Marquette coach Gary Tockman said. “A tie, you at least got a fighting chance to keep playing so that’s what we’ll do.”

Each goalie shined before the late goals including matching each other on back-to-back breakaways in the third period.

“Both goalies played well,” McGlynn said. “Stops on breakaways, it was a tough opener for both teams.”

While Mejia-Troop, a senior, is no stranger to postseason pressure for Vianney, it was the first taste of the postseason pressure cooker for Marquette’s Mohrmann, a freshman.

“He was good,” Tockman said. “He's confident. He comes out, probably had a little jitters I'm sure, but he did great.”

While Vianney got a big boost from the tie, the opposite feelings were felt in the Marquette locker room following the game, but neither team has time to reveal in the positivity or negativity of Friday’s result with their respective next round robin game less than 24 hours later.

“It feels like a loss,” Eckert said. “We got a battle at Kirkwood tomorrow. We've been in that stadium where it's hard, it feels like an away game. So, we're going to go out tomorrow and really play our game.”